About News In Korean

Improve your Korean reading and listening skills with news articles written in Korean! News In Korean was a subscription-based series that was published on Talk To Me In Korean for a full year from 2014 to 2015. The one-year cycle has been completed and News In Korean is now being made into a book as well as a video course.

This looks to be your most promising series to date, but are the slow and “normal” recordings really likely to have much utility for learners at the level required to start understanding the news? Surely the scaffolding supplied by the notes and translation should be sufficient to bring the content within the comprehension of your readers without any additional need to step on the audio-brakes, thus sacrificing a degree of realism.

That’s a good question. Everybody learns at a different pace and also in different styles, and we’ve seen a lot of learners who are much better at reading comprehension but can’t pronounce things clearly and therefore can’t understand spoken language very well. The slow speed recordings will be good for people who want to improve their pronunciation and listening skills 🙂

Fripod

Oh, their inclusion just seemed a bit redundant, that’s all.

But conceivably, yes, the slower audio files could be used as a yardstick for shadowing and self-recording in the early stages of speech production.

dd

This is great! Especially the slow speed reading!

Seokjin Jin

Thanks for your comment. Because I am a Korean, I like the fast one.

Pedro Barbosa

As I speak Japanese fluently, I recognized some words easily at the first time I listened to the recording. Words like 발표 （発表）, 표시 （表示）, 수 （数）, 기록 （記録）etc. Actually, I think that’s one of the advantages of learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese at the same time (yes, I do it). Teacher Hyonwoo, did it happen to you when you learned Japanese? Thank you very much.

in the fourth sentence of the first article, “구매를 하는, 이른바 ‘사재기’를 하고 있습니다”, what does “이른바” mean and what does the “바” mean? does it come from “보다”? also what is “수가” in the last sentence of article 1? is it “number” and why is it spelled that way? Thanks.

KyungHwa Sun

이른바 means “so-called”, and 바 here is a connective suffix used to present a situation which is related to why the following clause has happened in advance.

chris

great work guys! personally, i really like the three different speeds. its really helping me recognize the words and expressions without becoming overwhelming. keep up the great work! 😀

So far it seems to be more focused on advanced learners. How about publishing articles that are focused on beginners/lower intermediate learners? I think that that market is bigger and nobody offers this yet as far as I know. Because, as you know, nowadays many newspapers already publish news articles in both Korean and English (English article with Korean translation), so there is a lot of competition in the advanced learners market.

I also like the fact that you now provide flashcards of the difficult vocabulary.

Have you ever considered to – beside the word in Korean and English – also include the whole sentence in Korean AND English where this word is being used in the article? That way, it is easier to understand the context and thus it improves the learning efficiency.

Kamiel Choi

you just made my day. Exactly what I needed! For an efficient hover-over dictionary look for “toktokki” plugin for Chrome

Yvette

Wonderful! Brilliant! And exactly what I want (and need). Thank you so much TTMIK!

Nina Baradulina

Such lovely voices and content as well) Thank you for the work!

Dan Savage

I have just a quick question. If I subscribe, do the e-mails include the mp3 files for the news articles every time, or will I need to stream using an internet connection. It seems like each one will include downloadable mp3 files, but I wanted to ask because I’d like to sometimes listen without an internet connection.

Seokjin Jin

If you subscribe, you will also get a link of dropbox which has downloadable mp3 files and e-books files.

Dan Savage

Excellent. I often listen using my iPad and I don’t always have a wifi connection. Thank you for answering so quickly. I plan to subscribe right away. ^^

Seokjin Jin

Great! Thanks for studying Korean with us.

kjyfhw

I subscribed last week but havent received any email containg the mp3 files etc. Thank you.
Email: robotputih@gmail.com

Seokjin Jin

Hi. Did you check your spam mail box. Just in case, I hope you check it. If you still don’t receive it please send an e-mail to talktomeinkorean@gmail.com

lemonhibiscus

Hi! 🙂

I have a question regarding the first news story. The second sentence of the text begins with:

“현재 담뱃값은 2,500원으로,[…]”

What does the 으로 mean in this case? Perhaps I am wrong on this, but it almost seems to me as if it is used similarly to “from” here, as in: “From the current price of 2500 KRW, […]”? I normally only see it used to mean:

1) “by means of; with; by” [e.g.: 가위로 종이를 잘라요.]

2) “to; towards; into” [e.g.: 오른쪽으로 가세요].

I’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to clear this up for me! 🙂 Thank you!

Robin

In germany milk is not known to be healthy 😀 I think, quite the contrary.

AnnaBee27

I feel like a dummy. I read out loud article 3 and I had not idea what was going on. I listened to all 3 speeds… and it wasn’t until the fast one I realized this was about Facebook (페이스북).